“60 Minutes” based an entire segment attacking Karl Rove on a sole source bitter over a lost Alabama tire dump contract!

Meet Dana Jill Simpson– The Bill Burkett of 2008.Here’s some advice for the crew at “60 Minutes”:

When some Alabama nutjob comes to you and says she has pictures from a KKK meeting with Democratic officials holding Republican signs and then later says that she gave the pictures away…

Show the woman to the door- Do not run a whole segment with her as your source no matter how much you hate Karl Rove and no matter how much you believe that everyone in Alabama attends weekly KKK meetings.

Now we’re getting somewhere…John Hinderaker at Power Line posted yesterday on the “60 Minutes” hit piece on Rove and why CBS never should have run the story.

This may explain why Dana Jill Simpson went to the media in the first place.She was angry with the state for not awarding her client a tire dump contract.This report is from the Times Daily from June 2007:

In the beginning of her activism this year, her and her mother’s home burned. The fire, which is still being investigated, may have been caused by an electrical surge, Rainsville Fire Chief Ronnie Helton said.

Simpson said she informed an attorney of the possible Fuller conflict Feb. 15. The house fire was reported Feb. 21.

So why would someone who left a law practice in Birmingham to make more money as a small town lawyer, get involved in high-level political controversies?

She said her conscience about fair play and legal ethics made her do it.

“Even though I’ve been a lifelong Republican, I felt I had to do what’s right, morally right, and that’s why I told,” Simpson said. “I could have kept quiet and nobody would have known.”

Simpson’s conspiracy theory started as an investigation of reported dirty tricks she said she witnessed prior to a Scottsboro Ku Klux Klan rally. She said the conspiracy was designed to get Siegelman to quit his 2002 challenge of Riley’s narrow win.

Simpson said the germination of the conspiracy started when Riley’s son, Rob Riley, told her about Fuller’s contracting business. “I never would have known about it had it not been for Mr. Rob,” she said.

In an affidavit, she said she was asked to try to catch a Democratic lawyer in Jackson County putting up Bob Riley signs after the 2002 gubernatorial election, which Siegelman was contesting. She said she took pictures but doesn’t have them any more.

Simpson said she believes someone else’s photographs of the signs would be used to shame Siegelman into quitting to his 2002 re-election loss protest.

Siegelman dropped his protest, but not for the reasons Simpson said, according to Siegelman.

“We were facing what Al Gore had just gone through — this painful experience in Florida and the U.S. Supreme Court,” Siegelman said of his decision to concede the race Nov. 18, 2002.

Simpson’s affidavit mentions someone named Carl whose name she said was mentioned in a November 2002 telephone conference call.

She said the conference call was about the KKK trick. Also involved, she said, were Riley’s on, Rob Riley, who Simpson knew from her University of Alabama undergraduate days; former Alabama Supreme Court justice and lawyer Terry Butts; and Business Council of Alabama President Bill Canary…

Rob Riley said he believes Simpson’s motive for coming forward with the allegations now is the result of a debris removal company she represents losing a contract to remove tires from the Attalla tire dump.

As a lawyer, she had represented the losing bidder for the tire contract, former Alabama Attorney General staffer Mark Bollinger of Albertville…

The Siegelman investigation began under a Democratic U.S. attorney but took off after Bush appointed his prosecutors.

We reporters in Alabama, no doubt because we’re dumb rednecks or being paid off by Republicans, have from the beginning seen Simpson for what she is: a very lonely person with a very – and this is your word – vivid imagination…

The crazy ones are treated politely and ushered out the door as soon as possible. Considering her past stories — none corroborated by a single human being — 60 Minutes should never have interviewed her in the first place. However, after that mistake, once she started on the Rove tale, Pelley, the producers, the janitor, someone, should have pulled the switch.

Comments

As a privately owned web site, we reserve the right to edit or remove comments that contain spam, advertising, vulgarity, threats of violence, racism, anti-Semitism, or personal/abusive attacks on other users. The same applies to trolling, the use of multiple aliases, or just generally being a jerk. Enforcement of this policy is at the sole discretion of the site administrators and repeat offenders may be blocked or permanently banned without warning